By David Wells, editor at Surviving the OU
In this installment David completes TMA03 and looks at future trends in education tech
Hello everybody! If you’ve missed any of the previous posts then find them here: Entry 1, Entry 2, Entry 3, Entry 4, Entry 5, Entry 6, Entry 7, Entry 8 , Entry 9 and Entry 10.
Week 20: Completing TMA03
Another week, another TMA. Seems like it, anyway! Only one more TMA and then the EMA left on this course – it’s flying by. The good news about this assignment was, that it’s only a short one (500-1,000 words required) and it’s linked to the EMA, with a guaranteed 100% score. Unfortunately that 100% wont be added to our final grade as it’s just a way of recognising we’ve handed it in and are up to speed. The EMA is 6,000 words long and we have to respond to 12 questions in TMA03 to show we are thinking about the final assignment and put forward some ideas about what we will write about.
We have to pick two “technologies” to write about in the EMA and after some deliberation I’ve gone for Instructional Videos and Asynchronous Forums. Originally I had chosen blogs but have now decided to forget about that idea. For the videos I’ll be looking at YouTube, Udemy, Vimeo etc and their relation to teaching and learning. For forums I’ll be focusing heavily on the H800 tutor group forum and others like Reddit and Facebook. All of this is tutor permitting obviously, as she’ll be sending feedback and recommendations for me to work on.
Week 21: Implications and Future Trends
Putting that TMA and the EMA to one side, the module moves on and TMA04 is due mid-August so I’ll have to look at the next few weeks of work for the time being and get printing off some journal papers and sharpen my highlighter pens. Here are the key themes and issues for week 21 which also morphs into weeks 22, but more on that in the next entry. Number one has been pared down a bit as it’s fairly long:
- The introduction of new technologies has an impact on people and structures right across the institution. It has an impact not only on how modules are designed, delivered and supported but also on the institutional infrastructure and core business processes.
Followed by these two, also clipped down in size.
- There is a tension between institutional control of IT systems and personal ownership. With the plethora of free tools and services now available, students have the option to use these in preference to institutional systems. There are major debates about the pros and cons of Virtual Learning Environments vs. Personal Learning Environments.
- Some trends in technology use are global; but there are also interesting regional differences due to both cultural factors and policy differences at the national level.
Activity 1 focused on the impact that technology now has on education. We had to work out just where we sit on the technology spectrum, talking about where education and technology are heading in the future together and examples of web 2.0 innovations. Activity 2 was split into a bumper seven sections with a few journal readings to read, a podcast episode to listen to, mindmaps to look over and a blog post to write at the end. Out of all the activities and sub-activities I found A2f the most interesting. This was about VLE and visual learning technologies and partly self-made niches as described in the paper link here. Not much else going on this week. A bit dry overall – I found some of the material boring to be honest. After a TMA it’s hard to get motivated for the following week or so. Maybe that’s just my personality? I genuinely don’t think listing out much more of the content would be of interest to you so I’ll leave it there for now. Speak to you all in the next entry.
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